‘Tokunbo’ vehicles dominate Nigerian market by 90% — NADDC

National Automotive Design and Development Council (NADDC) has disclosed that the Nigerian vehicle market is dominated by pre-owned (popularly known as tokunbo) vehicles by 90 percent.

Speaking at the weekend in Abuja, the Director of Media, Mrs Susan Taiwo, in a paper presentation said high cost of brand-new vehicles has made many people in the country depend on tokunbo vehicles to meet their needs in the automotive industry.

In a paper titled “Understanding the Automotive Ecosystem — Nigeria’s Automotive Ecosystem: Potential, Performance, and the Missing Links”, the NADDC Director explained that Nigeria’s annual demand for vehicles sits at roughly 800,000, dominated heavily (over 85–90%) by imported Tokunbo vehicles.

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“Broadly split into Light Commercial/Passenger Vehicles, Heavy-Duty Commercial, Two/Three-Wheelers, Spare Parts/Aftermarket, and Repair/Maintenance services, Nigeria features an installed assembly capacity exceeding 600,000 units per year across over 30 licensed assembly plants”.

She noted that the actual local output hovers around 5% of capacity. “Plants operate well below optimal efficiency due to low patronage, gray imports, and macroeconomic pressures.

“Current local activity relies almost entirely on semi-knocked down (SKD) assembly,” the Director stated.

Taiwo also lamented that challenges like “high Infrastructure Overhead: Power generation, logistics bottlenecks, high port terminal charges, and foreign Exchange Volatility, which affects imported SKD/CKD kits and raw materials” are elements pushing up the cost of new vehicles in Nigeria.

“Sub-scale factory runs elevate unit costs compared to high-volume global plants. High interest rates and rigorous collateral terms…